by Natalie Dean
“That will be perfectly permissible,” she decided. It was somewhat more casual than what Mama would have approved of, but Mama was hundreds of miles away and had raised her offspring to think for themselves. She had had little choice; widowed before she was thirty when Papa died in a coal mine accident, she had supported her family by taking in laundry, selling bread and jams in the market, doing sewing for the owners of the mine, and practicing a form of thrift which would have been punishing had her children known any other means of making ends meet.
Sons stayed in the Yankovich home until they married and the same was true of daughters. But Bonnie had been hard to please, refusing the attentions of the young men who sought out the trim little brunette with the dark lashes and green eyes. She would not marry a man who went into the ground every day, she told her mother. Finally, when Bonnie turned twenty years old, and three of her younger sisters were already wives and mothers, Mrs. Yankovich had had enough. If she wouldn’t marry a man who worked below the ground, Mama said, she must find one who worked above it. Bonnie had answered an advertisement in a magazine for a mail-order bride, and now here she was in Mesquite, Texas, in the presence of her husband-to-be, who was half-naked, at least as the people of Pittsburgh would have seen him.
“I regret that until I get my horse back,” Mr. Kennesaw was saying, “we’re stranded here.”
“Was your horse taken from you?” she asked politely, wondering if he had been robbed of his mount as well as his clothing.
“In a manner of speaking,” he answered with a grin. “I was playing poker with a few pals, and someone got the idea to play for the shirt off my back. I had a lousy hand.”
“And your shoes?”
He nodded, looking mournful and amused at the same time. “My hat, too. I was powerful fond of that hat. Reckon I’ll need to buy me another one.”
“Will you need to buy another horse as well?”
“Shoot, no. We’ve got horses to spare at the ranch, and Whistler will come home on his own. He knows the way and no lousy poker hand is going to keep him away for long. But in the meantime,” he sighed, “we’d just do best to sit and wait for my brother Will Henry. He’ll be around shortly; he was coming into town this afternoon for supplies, and he’ll get us home.” With a bow and a flourish of his hand, Zachary Taylor Kennesaw indicated the bench on the porch of the general store.
Bonnie sat down. Mr. Kennesaw joined her. As passers-by walked in front of them, giving Bonnie curious glances and openly staring at her companion, she wondered why Mr. Kennesaw didn’t go into the store and purchase a ready-made shirt rather than continue to sit outside where it was obvious that he was the subject of interest. But he smiled in return to the people who went by, greeting them by name, without any indication of discomfiture.
He gave Bonnie the focus of his attention, asking if her journey had been pleasant, if the stage had stopped often enough. He promised that when they returned to the ranch, Elsie would have a big spread ready for them. “Everyone is right eager to meet you,” he said,
“Who is Elsie?”
“She’s our cook and just about the only person who’ll stand up to Grandmother.”
“Is your grandmother strong-willed?” Bonnie asked diplomatically. In his letters, Zachary—Z—had told her that his family all lived at the ranch, but except for mention of a twin brother, he had not given details of who the family members were.
Mr. Kennesaw released a laugh that seemed to find her comment very funny. “Strong-willed? I guess that’s what people with manners would say back East. Out here, we just say she’s pig-headed and ornery.”
“You say that to your grandmother?” Bonnie thought of her own grandmother, a diminutive woman aged more than her years by the decades of work and struggle. She had never learned English, but as the children all spoke Polish in the home and English at school, there had never been any difficulty in communicating with her.
“Grandmother’s tough,” Mr. Kennesaw said fondly. “She expects us to speak our minds. She’ll expect you to do the same, so don’t think you have to be on your best behavior with her. If you don’t give it back as soon as she dishes it out, she’ll serve you up for dessert every chance she gets.”
Chapter 2
Bonnie was saved by responding to this alarming revelation about a future member of her family when footsteps drew near.
“Z. Taylor Kennesaw, what in tarnation are you doing out here in broad daylight without a shirt on?”
Mr. Kennesaw held his hand up to his forehead so that he could see the man standing before him. “Linc Duffy had better cards,” he explained. “Miss Bonnie, this fine, upstanding member of the Kennesaw family is my older brother, Will Henry.”
Mr. Kennesaw’s older brother was the mirror image of him in looks, but not in demeanor. Zachary Taylor Kennesaw’s expression seemed to be perpetually merry as if everything in the world was no more than a good joke, even if it had come at his expense. Will Henry Kennesaw had the same blue-green eyes but without the glint of mischief buried inside like gemstones. His hair, at least what she could see of it below the brim of his hat, was the same well-baked brown biscuit color of a crust. He was wearing a shirt, boots, and an exasperated expression on his face.
“I’m his older brother by about three minutes,” Will Henry said, holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Miss Yankovich. I reckon you’re tired, hungry, thirsty, and wondering how long before the next stage comes through so you can get yourself back home where men don’t parade around town without their clothes on.”
“I’ve got my clothes on,” his brother disagreed. “The ones that matter, anyway.” He stood up and stretched, the muscles of his chest playing like chords against his tanned skin as he moved. “You see, Miss Bonnie, I told you my brother Will Henry would come along to bring us home. William Henry Harrison, my twin brother.”
“You’re both named for presidents,” Bonnie observed.
“Ma had the birthing of us, but Grandmother had the naming,” said Zachary Taylor. “And Grandmother had danced with General Taylor, so that accounted for one name. Then she figured that naming us after presidents might give us noble aspirations, so when it was apparent that there would be a matched pair of grandsons, she decided that William Henry Harrison Kennesaw would do for the first one. He got the most names.”
It seemed odd to Bonnie that a grandmother would have the naming of her grandsons, but even odder that she would choose to name them after presidents whose terms in office had been tragically brief. Still, she reasoned as Zachary Taylor lifted her effortlessly from the ground to help her onto the wagon seat, both young men looked to be in excellent health. Will Henry seemed the soberer of the two, with a smile that took longer to show up on his face and lingered rather than flashed like lightning as it did on his brother’s features.
Zachary Taylor apologized for leaving her in the wagon but explained that he would help his brother load items into the back of the wagon. “I’ll stay outside the store,” he grinned, “or I’ll offend the ladies.”
“Never mind that he’s already offended his fiancée,” said Will Henry, hefting a large sack of flour onto his brother’s bare shoulders.
Bonnie couldn’t truthfully say that she was not offended by her husband-to-be's appearance. She knew that her mother would have been outraged by such a lapse of decorum. The coal miners of Pittsburgh were perhaps uncouth and often illiterate, but they were unfailingly observant of the domestic rules of conduct that their womenfolk enforced, and a bare-chested man in public view would not have been acceptable. The men of Pittsburgh had their own set of rules for breaking, but they would not have shown themselves in front of others without shirts covering their chests. Will Henry seemed to believe in the same code. But Zachary Taylor, moving from the side door of the store to the wagon with no embarrassment, was oblivious to anyone else’s opinions as he loaded up the wagon in his bare feet, with no covering over his upper body. Bonnie tried not to be obvious about watchin
g him as he moved, but she found it impossible to look away.
While Will Henry went back inside the store, Zachary Taylor picked up her bags from the bench and put them in the wagon. Everything she owned was in those bags. It wasn’t a lot, but there wasn’t a lot to own when a girl was one of a family of thirteen. Mama had provided what she could, determined that her daughter wasn’t going to go all the way west to be married without something from her family, but even with the hand-stitched pillowcases that Mama had lovingly sewed, Bonnie had not come west burdened with an abundance of possessions.
Finally, the brothers were finished. Will Henry got into the wagon to her left and took up the reins. Zachary Taylor jumped in on her right. Will Henry slapped the reins against the horse’s backside, and the wagon moved forward.
“How’s Linc going to take it when Whistler shows up missing?” Will Henry asked.
“I’ll make it right in cash,” his brother answered.
“Miss Yankovich, when you pick out a horse, make sure that you don’t let Z ride it into town, or it’ll end up among his poker losses,” advised Will Henry.
“Pick out a horse?”
“Everyone on the ranch has his own horse. Not that Grandmother needs one anymore, but she used to.”
“I don’t really know how to ride a horse,” she said hesitantly.
“You can’t ride a horse?” Zachary Taylor repeated as if such a condition were inconceivable to him.
“Z, they’ve got trains and hackneys for hire back East,” Will Henry reproved. “Why would she have had to learn to ride? It’s different out here, Miss Yankovich. But you’ve probably already figured that out from the stage coach ride. There’s a lot of distance and not a lot of roads out here, so everyone rides. Someday we’ll have train tracks too, just like back East, but that won’t happen fast.”
Bonnie was wondering what it would be like to have to ride a horse to get to where she needed to go. There was no need for riding a horse in Pittsburgh. No one in her community owned a horse anyway. But everything that they needed, and all the shops that they could afford to patronize were in walking distance. Mama made everything on her own that she could make and she had taught her daughters to manage households, when they had them, with frugal self-sufficiency. But a horse…
“Don’t fret,” Will Henry said, “riding’s easy once you get the hang of it, and we’ve got a couple of horses that’ll be just right for a lady.”
“It’ll be a dull ride,” chimed in Zachary, “but if that’s what you want, I expect you and Cabot will get along well.”
“Cabot is a gentle mount,” Will Henry said, “and he’s been around the ranch a long time, so he knows the way to every place you’d think of going.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Miss Bonnie, you might not want to mention to Grandmother that you don’t ride. It’ll seem strange to her, and she’ll have you on a saddle by dawn tomorrow.”
It was the second ominous reference to the woman who would be her grandmother-in-law, a person who seemed to dominate the ranch where she would be living with Zachary Taylor. It seemed peculiar that no one had mentioned parents or other siblings, just a grandmother who was seemingly the power in the Kennesaw family. Bonnie wondered whether “Grandmother” was the kind of woman who would relish establishing her dominance over a newly-arrived younger woman who was a stranger to Texas and the ways of Texans. Mama had brought her children up to respect their elders and to always be mindful of their manners. But she had also taught them never to let another person rule over them. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” she had said once when one of the Yankovich siblings had come home in tears because of something that had been said. “And to God the things that are God’s. For anything else, you keep what’s yours and don’t let anyone take it away, even if it’s something you can’t see or hold.”
“Z is right, Miss Yankovich,” Will Henry added. “Grandmother was riding as soon as she was out of leading strings and she doesn’t always realize that it’s not that way for the rest of the world. We’ll get you on a saddle in no time, but Grandmother doesn’t have to be told.”
Chapter 3
Grandmother, it turned out, had not given any thought to whether or not the new arrival to the family was comfortable on a horse or not. When Will Henry drove the wagon into the dirt turnaround in front of a long, spreading house that looked to Bonnie as if it didn’t know where to end, there was a tall, lean woman standing, with the aid of two stout canes and a watchful woman behind her, in the grass.
“Grandmother!” said Will Henry as he descended from the wagon. “How long have you been standing out here?”
“I wasn’t going to greet Zachary Taylor’s bride from my bed,” declared the woman. “Zachary Taylor—where are your clothes? Don’t tell me that you met your bride looking like that? You ought to be ashamed of yourself! I hope you apologized to Miss Yankovich for this?”
Zachary Taylor grinned insouciantly at Bonnie as he put his hands firmly on her waist and lifted her to the ground. He continued to grin as he held her, as if he liked the way she felt in his grip and wondered what she thought about it. She gave him a hint of a smile that didn’t reveal much, except that she wasn’t averse to his touch.
“No, ma’am,” he answered, “I just hoped she’d notice my winning ways before she noticed that I wasn’t wearing all that I should be.”
“I never heard of such a thing,” his grandmother snapped. “I don’t think there’s ever been a Kennesaw who met his bride naked as a savage!”
“Grandmother, he’s not quite naked,” argued Will Henry.
“As good as!”
The woman delivering this tirade was, Bonnie judged, in her sixties, with dark hair lightly silvered and deep-set brown eyes that had the fierce expression of an eagle. Her grandsons didn’t resemble her in the least. Bonnie went to her as soon as Zachary Taylor brought her out of the wagon.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kennesaw,” she said, “for welcoming me into your home.”
“Thank you for coming,” the woman answered. “Yankovich. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that name before.”
“It’s Polish.”
“Polish? Where’s that?”
“Poland is in Europe. My grandfather came to the United States from Poland to work in the coal mines.”
“It sounds foreign,” the woman nodded as if this explained it. “Coal mines? Dirty work. I never could fathom how a man could stand to be underground all day.”
“I reckon they do it because it’s their work, Grandmother,” Will Henry interposed, “not because they are averse to sunlight.”
“I’m surprised they don’t all head west where they can work outside in the sunlight,” Grandmother responded. “Underground all day. Dangerous work.”
As that was why Bonnie had come west for a husband, she didn’t see any reason to add to the discussion. She did not feel comfortable in relating the story of her father’s death in the coal mine; although it had happened eight years ago, the memory was still painfully raw in her mind.
“Grandmother,” Will Henry said, “you do know that cattlemen get gored by bulls and crushed in stampedes, and bitten by poisonous snakes, and killed by Indians.”
“Grandmother wants Miss Bonnie to think that the West is much safer than the East,” Zachary Taylor said, picking up Bonnie’s bags.
“Get along with both of you,” their Grandmother said, but it was apparent that, despite her gruff tone, she was fond of her grandsons. “Zachary Taylor, you get inside and get some clothes on. You’re not sitting down to the table in that condition. Bonnie, Elsie will show you to your room where you can freshen up. I don’t suppose either one of these louts has thought to give you so much as a sip of water from his canteen. Elsie will bring you a pitcher of water. Will Henry, you can help me into the house. Clem will take care of the supplies.”
Will Henry took his grandmother by one arm; Elsie took the other. Bonnie picked up the canes that had been
allowed to drop to the dirt when human help replaced the need for the support they provided.
Once inside, when Mrs. Kennesaw was seated at the head of the table, Elsie turned to Bonnie. “I’ll show you to your room,” she said. “Looks like Z already took your bags.”
Read the rest of “Taming the Rancher: Brides and Twins Book 2” by clicking on this link and downloading it.
BONUS BOOKS SECTION: Descriptions Included
MAIL ORDER BRIDE COLLECTION
Written by Grace Weston
The Expectant Bride Heads West
Book Description
THE EXPECTANT BRIDE HEADS WEST
Brides of Laramie Book 1
A Western Romance Short Story
No place to go, and only one option…
She must become a mail order bride.
Bernadette Dixon was elated with joy over the news that the war was over. Even better was the good news the doctor gave her yesterday. Unfortunately, her world got turned upside down once she read the letter stating that her husband died in the war. In the blink of an eye, she has become a widow whose only hope for survival depends on finding a husband to provide for her and her unborn child. Problem is, who's going to want a pregnant bride!
Mattathias Jacobs is about to purchase a farm of his own with his boss's help...or so he thinks! What he needs is a sharp-witted bride to help him straighten things out. Will she still want to be with him when she finds out he's only a worker on the ranch? Better yet, will he still want to be with her when he finds out she's pregnant!?!
Chapter 1
Frank was dead.